TERRI WINDLING

I'd had no particular interest in the Southwest at all as a young girl, and I was completely surprised that the desert stole my heart to the extent it did.

One of the best things about folklore and fairy tales is that the best fantasy is what you find right around the corner, in this world. That's where the old stuff came from.

I'm also looking for gems that the average reader might have missed.

What I find interesting about folklore is the dialogue it gives us with storytellers from centuries past.

Filmmaking can be a fine art.

Read the folklore masters. Go to galleries. Walk in the woods. That's what you need to be an artist or storyteller.

In more recent years, I've become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest.

I have a great respect for the academics who are working with the source material. My hat's off to them.

My book collection is primarily in America, since that's where I've lived most of my life.

Magic Realism is not new. The label's new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it's been around as long as literature has been around.

There have been a number of us working very, very hard to bring myth and fairy tales into public consciousness, through fantasy literature and other media. I hope we're succeeding in some small way.

We've always lived in dark times. There has always been a range of human experience from the sublime to the brutal, and stories reflect it. It's no less brutal now; each age has its horrors.

Robert Jordan, whether he's writing with passion or not, I don't know.

I'm working on a very long series of paintings based on desert folklore.

There's that old adage about how there's only seven plots in the world and Shakespeare's done them all before.

A good novel editor is invisible.

But for me, really, the written word is always stronger than film.

I divide my time between homes in Arizona and England, six months a year in each place.

I like Celtic folk music, Native American music, and any kind of early music. There isn't a lot of music that I don't like... except for Show Tunes.

I wanted to be a scientist. But I had no math skills.

I was a great fan of Jim Henson.

I'm an artist, I'm not an academic folklorist.

I've only been living in England for the last 10 years, if you don't count my student years.

There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book.

I'd like to encourage people to please keep reading-and most importantly, to please keep trying new writers. The only way we can bring fresh new material into the field is if people go out and buy it.